Today was the flattest day so far, the morning ride was cool as I headed towards Corvallis. The group I met at the campsite were from Corvallis and they recommended if I had time I do a quick loop of Oregon State University, so I stopped at the supermarket, picked up some lunch, and cycled the few blocks to campus to eat.

Oregon State University was very pretty, the whole town of Corvallis was very pretty, I can see why they liked living there.

Both the morning and afternoon’s riding was through farmland, large fields of wheat and other crops. Near to the town of Corvallis there were research farms that had little plots, but as I got further the fields got larger. Today was also on much quieter roads than yesterday, on rural roads that paralleled the main highways.

The afternoon’s ride was long and flat and hot, and I was relieved to get to the end. I was glad to have 3 water bottles today.

The end of the ride I am only about 4 miles from downtown Eugene, so I spent the late afternoon doing a quick bike tour of downtown. It’s an interesting place, they have pretty great bike infrastructure, and just like California towns there are quite a few homeless people, but in general it didn’t feel there was a real focal point, there are a couple of very old houses, but they are unassuming, small, and privately owned. I guess the main focal point is the Willamette River, which I had camped next to last night and followed all the way down todays ride. I was thinking as I was cycling past it that in California a river would never discharge this much water, it would be dammed upstream and only a trickle would flow downstream.

Tomorrow I head into the Willamette National Forest and follow the McKenzie River, which joined up to the Willamette just before it flows into Eugene. I will have to take the alternate route and not the McKenzie Pass main route unfortunately, the McKenzie Pass road is meant to be the best cycle route in central Oregon, and cyclists unofficially ride it before cars each spring, when the Oregon Department of Transportation ploughs a single lane down the center of the roadway to promote snow melt. The Oregon DOT never actually opens to cyclists but they seem to tolerate them, which as a Californian seems strange to me, Yosemite would definitely write you a ticket if you rode the closure. But anyway, this year they are repaving McKenzie Pass so they’ve made it extra clear that this year no bicycles really means no bicycles.

I’ve now finished Section 1 (of 12), so I’m 235 miles ito the 4,200 mile route. The next section is 336 miles to Baker City, still in Oregon, but at the far east of the state, from Baker City it’s not far to Idaho.